When gaming message boards attack

[Rob O'Boston]

The worst thing in the gaming world is a game's main message board. It can also be the best. You can sort of track it like this:


Game is in 2 or 3 years out (generally when the PC mags have the MOST to say about the game): Message board becomes a happy, hopeful community consisting of 30 or so regulars. Sometimes they fall in love.

Game is 1 month out: This is the climax. Hundreds of excited would be players "fanbois" fill the site, preaching the wonders to be seen. Every thread is about nothing, and no one can get enough.

1 week out: A madness fills the message board. People are delirious for the game. Its like Christmas morning except you're 30 and a topless Cordelia from Angel is sitting under the tree.

Release: well, you know, people start announcing they got it, and in what city, and the Canadians are complaining about the Canadian peso being about .0002 to the dollar.

AND THEN IT HAPPENS. POST RELEASE. God, I hate this part. The anti-fanbois runs amok. Maybe they hate the game, maybe they just want attention. Maybe they can't get it to run, and the tech forum is too boring. Here are some long threads currently on Bioware's NWN board:



Please god Make a patch or something for this moronic 45 degree view!( 1, 2, 3, ... , 25 )

Camera Angle is Awful - Please Change!

Resting makes the game too easy( 1, 2 )

Henchmen #1 problem with game?( 1, 2, 3, ... , 6 )

Really bad interface design? When will you finally fix it???( 1, 2, 3, ... , 5 )

This game will be dead in a month..( 1, 2, 3, ... , 12 )


What bugs me the most is that these are the longest posts on the board. And its all crap!

Here is a very nasty face: :evil:

[mtkafka]

You should have seen the MW boards after release (a game i like alot!)... stuff such as 'MW too easy!' or 'my problems with MW' or 'why i hate MW' or 'MW crashes alot' or 'WTS MW for NWN'... its all the same. It's good theres alot of traffic, at least.

etc

[Bub, Andrew]

It's good theres alot of traffic, at least. etc

And that's all that really matters... isn't it?
As Oscar Wilde said: "There's only one thing worse than being talked about... and that's not being talked about."

[Murph]

Ah, that's the way it is, isn't it? Just can't please people, and the wheels that squeak the loudest, and all...

It really ticks me off seeing all those people griping so much about NWN, though. I think it's just an absolutely great game!!

[chet]

Did anyone else see this post on fatbabies?
http://www.fatbabies.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=335

Now that is a crazed fan. Just a little bit (it is very,very long)


I have a suggestion for a Civilization style game. It would combine the genres of strategy, wargame, action, adventure, simulation, interactive movie and role playing. How about a more complex tech-tree, more units wonders and more. How about a multiple storylines that are different for each of the major civilizations.
Techology levels would cover the 8000 B. C. - 2100 A.D. Summerian/Egyptian/Greek periods, Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire, Dark Ages, Middle Ages, High Middle Ages, Medieval Europe and Japan, Renaissance, Reformation, Elizabethian era, Spanish Empire, Inca and Aztec Empires, Jacobite era, Barque era, Age of Discovery, Enlightenment era, Industrial Revolution, Napoleonic era, Romantic era, Victorian era, Edwardian era, American Civil War era, Old West era, British Empire era, World War 1 era, World War 11 era, Korean War era, Vietnam War era, Cold War era, Gulf War era, Futuristic Space era and more. Which would make it more Civ 2 and Age of Empires with all the units. You can have a Ancient Egyptian palace, Roman palace, Byzantine palace, Japanese/Chinese palace, Aztec/Inca palace, Medieval palace, Turkish palace, Renaissance palace, Baroque palace, Enlightenment palace, Napoleonic palace, Czarist palace and much more.You can choose if you want to be a god or mortal. If you are a mortal you have only a limited time period to rule and you can be killed. If you are a god you can live forever and have god like powers like creating disasters, plagues, destroying non believers and more.

I think this man's use of "and more" is a little redundant.

Chet

[Alan Au]

Ah, the vocal minority. It cuts both ways. For every one person who speaks up, there are potentially hundreds who don't. Presumably, this is why (voting taxpayers) writing letters to a congressperson works. On the other hand, it's not certain if it works for games, since it isn't clear what the distribution of paying customers is.

Then there are the exceptional cases, like the Gone Gold boards where it's basically a perpetual free-for-all. ;)

- Alan

[Wholly Schmidt]

You guys ever have the misfortune of stumbling around in the gamefaqs.com message boards? You would not believe how many people ask what the system requirements are and if the game will run on their specific computer. It's hilarious, in a pathetic kind of way.

[Sean Tudor]

This is still happening on the IL2 Sturmovik message boards after 7 months. There are two types of people posting on them :

1. The Luftwhiners
2. Everyone Else

The Luftwhiners whinge about every new patch update. They whinge when they can't shoot down a Russian aircraft. They whinge when their BF-109 won't make coffee and shoot down five Russians at the same time.

A sample :

To OLEG.M Fw190 Performance

Late-War Russian Fighter Aircraft 'Absolutely Superior?'

Why doesn't IL2 look like this for me?

Cheating has been detected!

BF109 Fuel Contents Guage Whats happening here?

IL-2 not as good as CFS2

somethink stinks here ....

The worst WWII game EVER!

Absolutly NO MERCY given by AI ack ack

The Hawker Tempest is absolutely one of the best fighters of WWII

MY FAVORITE PLANE isnt UBER enough!

Damage is severely unreal, rear gunners fantastic

real gunnery, aint real enough in this game!

"Oleg's Ready Room" disgusts me

Really annoyed!!!!!

Finally!!! Undisputable proof of VVS bias

I’m proud to be a Luftwhiner!

Bye IL and Oleg for now , here is why please read Oleg

Who is saddest Il-2 pedant?

Proof that LA5 is too good

Vulching

These FMs are a joke ....period

Booo

If this is real, Battle of Britain should have been lost

Luftwafflers still looking it seems....

there must be some way to get rid of this retarded stutter

F.U.B.A.R

TORTURE!!!

Torpedo in Il-2, Still not Implemented Right

Damn hard to control plane with bomb

PAUSES!! NOT STUTTERS, BUT PAUSES!!!

La5FN just outclimbed my G6/AS... !?

Cockpit inaccuraces for 109E

Oleg, spelling mistake in cockpit of Me 109 E

You screwed with my trigger Oleg:(

I see heavy errors in the FM, am I crazy?

Reply to the Thread locking Fan Boys....

what is bad in IL2??!! (don't enter when happy with IL2)

Plz correct the rate of fire for german planes...

For crybabies that think Oleg advatages russian side...

Ban bad players

Oleg, Soviet a/c are ridiculusly overmodelled in the vertical

Oleg: A small essay on gun calibre and Damage Models

Wrong numbers in IL2 FM

Oleg How to Help Your Game Look Better

FW-190 is not accelarating fast and this is why

OLEG IS NOT HERE

[Anonymous]

You missed the scary thread in which some of the posters knew the exact paint name used on one of the plane's instrument panel and were complaining that the game wasn't using it...

[Jessica M.]

This is not a new phenomenon. Passionate gamers sometimes make for weird message boards.

Check out:

http://www.gamedesigner.net/news.phtml?id=16

I can attest to Mr. Creepy Pants, <g>.

[Sean Tudor]

You missed the scary thread in which some of the posters knew the exact paint name used on one of the plane's instrument panel and were complaining that the game wasn't using it...

Oh god yes - that would have been the ME-262 cockpit. :roll:

[Jason Cross]

People are delirious for the game. Its like Christmas morning except you're 30 and a topless Cordelia from Angel is sitting under the tree.


Sorry Rob, I didn't really pay attention to anything you said after that.

[Anonymous]

"Sorry Rob, I didn't really pay attention to anything you said after that."

And to think that for some lucky mofo out there, that is a reality.

Hey, lets try the Brian Reynolds trick:

Charisma Carpenter, Charisma Carpenter, Charisma Carpenter!

[Anonymous]

Cut it out.

[Sebmolo]

Has anybody seen this before? It was linked to in that Gamedesigner.net article about Mr Creepy Pants

http://www.geekissues.org/quotes/?top

Mental, absolutely mental.

Samples...
<weDge> So I had a girlfriend for all of 9 months. She dropped by one afternoon when I was sick with a pan of brownies and a video tape with the simpsons on it (my favorite show). so I start eating the brownies and turn on the tape. midway through it, it cuts to her sucking off some dude. he nuts in her mouth, she looks at the camera, and says "you're dumped. enjoy the brownies" - and spits the mouthful of cum into a bowl of brownie mix. fucked up huh? I want to die.

<+kritical> christin: you need to learn how to figure out stuff yourself..
<+Christin1> how do i do that

<Kazz> Do vampires have anuses? Cause that's why I wouldn't let this kid invade a vampire's anus in this RPG, right, I was GMing, and his character was an Anus Shade, with the power to possess and control the anuses of people and animals.. and I figured that vampires don't have anuses.
<Zaratustra> a vampire's anus is present, but non-working.
<Zaratustra> like a network card without the appropriate driver.
<Kazz> Wow. You're the biggest dork on Earth.
<Sharkey> And you're DMing an rpg with Anus Shades.

<tatclass> YOU ALL SUCK DICK
<tatclass> er.
<tatclass> hi.
<andy\code> A common typo.
<tatclass> the keys are like right next to each other.

serluny: how long did it took u to learn c?
ReDPriest:4.5 minutes
serluny:how did u do that?
ReDPriest:i downloaded it into my brain..i got a program to do
that
serluny:what program
ReDPriest:download shit into your brain v3.1
serluny:how do i download it?
ReDPriest: go to www.downloadable-shit-for-your-brain.com
serluny:i cant download it something is wrong

<psychicbug> ok, take the bible in a .txt document and open it in notepad. shift every first letter to the right 1, and save it as an .avi. turns out, its a cumshot vid

[Supertanker]

Those are some great ones. This was my favorite for around here:

<Polytope> tetris is so unrealistic

[Menzo]

I've come to the opinion that the inevitable trend for all online communities is dissolution and strife. The fact is, the core community demands an infinite amount of attention and participation from the company and designers making the games they like.

It doesn't matter how much time you give these (mostly) guys. You could dedicate someone on your dev team to spend their entire day all week to answering message board posts and emails and it still wouldn't be enough. You would still get posts from people saying that their ideas didn't get implemented, that they could have done it better, or that the designers didn't listen.

And this is because the vast majority of people who spend time posting on your average fansite message board are idiots. These are kids who think that they know how to design games!

And of course they are completely unencumbered by the reality of creating a game. They don't know what it's like to face a decision to run late and incur and extra cost of $500,000 to get that cool new feature in that .01% of your buyers will use (though it seems like more because that's ALL the community is talking about).

In the end I think the key is to build a game that can foster a community, but to not participate in it at all. It's an extremely slippery slope when you start posting on message boards.

[Dave Long]

I've often said the designers should make the game they want to create and not spend the time looking for input from the "community". It's the team's game (and the publisher's of course) so they should know where they want to go. It's ok to solicit feedback through an e-mail address where you're already making it one step harder for the messageboard flunky because he's got to compose something reasonable or have it ignored. You're also not compelled to reply to those e-mails. You're just taking suggestions.

Back in the days of no boards, wasn't this the only thing you could go on? You had to build your sequel based on some feedback via snail mail but that's about where it ended. People always claim games were more diverse back then and some days I'm inclined to agree and I think the "community participation" along with the greater perceived market demand for look-alike games is largely responsible for this trend toward homogenized gaming. (Before anyone goes off on how X game is "different", I'm well aware that there's some great original ideas out there. I point them out when I can myself)

Anyway, developers should make the game they want to make and hopefully they'll have commercial success. This is how you get the next Half-Life, not by spending a bunch of time reading the message boards and arguing with nutcases like us. We'll provide feedback via that e-mail address I mentioned above. :D

--Dave

[Alan Au]

About the comment that designers should make the games that they want, I have to say yes and no. I've definitely seen games where the designer went overboard and engineered all of the gameplay out. This usually involves weird puzzles and insta-death booby-traps, broken scripts, and the like.

- Alan

[Dave Long]

Yes Alan, that can happen, but as Adam points out, you won't necessarily gain anything by taking the opinion of a bunch of armchair designers sitting in front of a PC all day reading messageboards either.

Personally, I'd rather trust the developers to make the decisions and come up with the ideas. I'd hope that if I was building a game, my publisher would have enough confidence in my abilities to let me design it rather than having me get a committee of gamers to help out via a messageboard.

That might go a bit away from what Adam's talking about though. I think he's entirely right that spending too much time arguing and fighting with gamers on a game's messageboard is detrimental to the process. Too many cooks and all that...

Some of the best loved games of all time were done by very small teams down to like one guy. Look at Rollercoaster Tycoon. Sheer genius and it came from basically one guy. You can't do much of that today with the reality of technology and the time it takes to create these huge productions, but you can surely benefit from having one or two guys with their hand firmly on the rudder and the rest of the team filling in the blanks (art, programming the systems, etc.).

--Dave

[Robert Sharp]

Weren't people saying "You can't do that today" When Rollercoaster Tycoon came out? I think Jeff Vogel would argue that you can still make games by yourself and be successful. Does he have a Ferrari? Probably not, but I bet he is comfortable with Spiderweb, and he makes great games, without all the glitz. Counterstrike wasn't a huge team either. Maybe, with all the gaming geeks, erm, gurus on this message board, we could put together a team of 10 people, all willing to work for profit shares, chip in and buy the Lithtech engine (or some other cheaper engine) and make a game.

Personally, I am of the camp that says that developers can do what they want, they just have to suffer (or enjoy) the consequences. They put up the money, along with the publisher. They put in the time. If it isn't a good game, don't buy it. You can wait for the review, decide if they did things in a way that you like, and base your decision on that. Developers don't owe us anything. We don't pay them until after they are finished, so the only reason to please us is to get our money. That's important, of course, but if you listen to the public too much you get Daikatana. Actually, no one asked for that :?

[Sparky]

Our experience as a "very small team down to like one guy" (and why I won't put a message board on my site):

As Sturgeon's Law defines, 90 percent of the suggestions/ideas you get are ...either technically unfeasible or just one person's fixation that doesn't fit with our vision in the least ("I loved Outpost/Leather Goddesses of Phobos/Falcon 4. Can you make the interface exactly like that"? "You need to put a giant meatball in the game." "Can the 52-Foot Woman wear red high heels?"). Many ideas are already in our plan. Not that we don't listen or take suggestions -- we do, but I can't spend a lot of time on it, certainly not moderating a board. We have too many things on our own wish list. I won't even get into the legal issues involved in handling other people's ideas (which is why many game companies don't accept them at all).

[Alan Au]

Oops, I forgot the whole second half of my post back there, the bit where I mention that the designer's core gameplay concept needs to stay consistent during development. I agree that a designer is under absolutely no obligation to cater to anyone else's idea of what might be fun or worth including. At the same time, the designer needs to be aware that people will attempt to "play" this game and not just gape at it from afar. Caveat, uh, designor or something. (Boy, my Latin sucks!)

- Alan

[wumpus]

I've come to the opinion that the inevitable trend for all online communities is dissolution and strife.
No, it's gonads and strife.

[Ben Sones]

"I loved Outpost/Leather Goddesses of Phobos/Falcon 4. Can you make the interface exactly like that?"

If you really make your interface a perfect amalgam of Outpost, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, and Falcon 4, I promise that I'd buy 100 copies of your game. Really.

[Met_K]

Please god Make a patch or something for this moronic 45 degree view!( 1, 2, 3, ... , 25 )

Camera Angle is Awful - Please Change!

Resting makes the game too easy( 1, 2 )

Henchmen #1 problem with game?( 1, 2, 3, ... , 6 )

Really bad interface design? When will you finally fix it???( 1, 2, 3, ... , 5 )

This game will be dead in a month..( 1, 2, 3, ... , 12 )

Please god make a patch that makes the game run. Please, god, do it. Otherwise, you'll forever be cursed as the company who makes games that simply play rock-paper-scissor to decide if they'll run on the machine or not. (i.e. GTA3)

[Alan Au]

How about fixing the installer/uninstaller so it doesn't delete system files from your hard drive? :roll:

- Alan

[Robert Sharp]

Funny, I don't have any problems with GTA3 on my PS2 ;).

[wumpus]

No problems, that is, except for the incredibly slow framerate, the near-60-second load times, and the pixellated 320x200 resolution. And the awful on-foot controls.

But you're right, at least it runs.

[Anonymous]

and the pixellated 320x200 resolution.

You are wrong wumpus. PS/2 games do not run at 320x200 resolution. Try loading up a PS1 game with none of the extra filtering from the PS2 to see what 320x200 looks like. It is at least some form of 640x480 or interlaced 640x240 or something but it is not 320x200.

-- Xaroc

[Xaroc]

I don't know why I keep getting logged out but the last line should read "The PS/2 uses at least some form of 640x480 or interlaced 640x240 or something but it is not 320x200."

-- Xaroc

[Doug Erickson]

The PS2 has a number of modes, none of which are 320x200 (well, that are used by any game I can think of). The most common mode - the "jaggie" mode - is 640x240 field rendering, which is the easiest for developers unfamiliar with the hardware to use, since you can treat the 4MB VRAM like a traditional frame buffer for the most (640x240x16 is a lot less expensive than 640x480x16, obviously). It's also the ugliest, since it updates a new 640x240 image per field (60 fields/30 frames per second NTSC), resulting in shimmering and the dreaded "jaggies". GTA3 outputs the image with 640x240 field rendering.

More and more games, however, like Tekken 4 and Soul Calibur 2, are outputting 640x480 frame buffers, with support for progressive scan and a natural 640x480 image (rather than interlaced). Now that devs are getting a grip on the PS2 hardware, they'll stop trying to treat it like a PC or a Dreamcast, and stream data into the VRAM (as intended) across the massive bus rather than chunking it and having to deal with space issues. Many devs are starting to implement AA in PS2 games, like Baldur's Gate AA (which looks rock solid).

The Dreamcast had an excellent flicker filter built into the display hardware that hid a lot of the artifacts that come with interlaced field rendering (although most games used the 640x480 frame buffer, thanks to its very traditional architecture). That's why DC games still have better output than even Gamecube games, which are somewhere between PS2 and DC image quality (when AA isn't applied - AA is a big hit on the GC, which has to play it safe with fill rate thanks to its fixed pipeline). The XBox also lacks the DC image filter, but AA is much cheaper on the XBox than any other console, so its not really an issue.

Hope this helps!

[Brad Grenz]

Yeah, I'm certain there are no PS2 games that run lower than 640x240.

[Met_K]

You are aware that 640x480 is higher than the maximum standard television set resolution, aren't you?

Ahem, what's the sound of a pebble striking Goliath in the eye, again?

[Anonymous]

Unless I'm mistaken, TVs don't have "native" resolutions. I do know that my TV can display my laptop's 800x600 resolution just fine, and the one we use at work can go above 1024x768.

Consoles have some sort of funky converter to turn a 640x480 digital image into something a TV can use, so there's no "higher than native" resolution at all.

[Doug Erickson]

There's a thing called overscan on NTSC sets. VF2 and DoA for the Saturn, for example, used it to display in a weird-ass resolution like 708x512 (interlaced).

[Met_K]

Native resolution for a tv is somewhere around 480x440. That's assuming you have a 500-line, NTSC tv. I know what you're saying, Adam, and it's partially right. But it would be just ludicrous to say that there's no "unspoken standard" in the NTSC set industry.

Also, what brand are your tvs? How new are they? What kind of converters are you using to run the output from your laptop to the tv? Is it full screen, or are you barred on two or four sides? etc.

While I'm not going to just flat out say tvs are primitive technology, and can't do this or can't do that, I will say that the majority of tvs in American homes _can't_ do what the PS2 is capable of. Thus, the need for converters. :)

I wasn't going to argue whether or not the games are made in said resolution, just that the tv can't display 'em.

[Jessica M.]

I've come to the opinion that the inevitable trend for all online communities is dissolution and strife. The fact is, the core community demands an infinite amount of attention and participation from the company and designers making the games they like.

It doesn't matter how much time you give these (mostly) guys. You could dedicate someone on your dev team to spend their entire day all week to answering message board posts and emails and it still wouldn't be enough. You would still get posts from people saying that their ideas didn't get implemented, that they could have done it better, or that the designers didn't listen.

And this is because the vast majority of people who spend time posting on your average fansite message board are idiots. These are kids who think that they know how to design games!

And of course they are completely unencumbered by the reality of creating a game. They don't know what it's like to face a decision to run late and incur and extra cost of $500,000 to get that cool new feature in that .01% of your buyers will use (though it seems like more because that's ALL the community is talking about).

In the end I think the key is to build a game that can foster a community, but to not participate in it at all. It's an extremely slippery slope when you start posting on message boards.

This is just about the dumbest conclusion about how to handle a game community that I've ever seen posted on a public board. Is this what it means to be in community relations for a publisher these days, just up and quit when you get it wrong and don’t like the results?

The community won't go away just because you decide not to interact with them; all you are doing is giving up any control and influence you might have had and creating an atmosphere of "Oh, they think they are too good for us" or "They don't want to admit there is a problem." More, you are losing a valuable information resource by ignoring them; within days or weeks, they will know far more about how the game actually works than you do, or ever will.

Unfortunately, this mirrors the attitude at many developers and publishers. This kind of activity from the players is NOT an inevitable fact of life. It does happen frequently for a number of reasons, the main one being that clueless amateurs and frustrated wannabe developers with absolutely the wrong attitude and disposition for the task - often chosen by the 'first raised hand' method - are placed in charge of customer service, player relations and/or community relations ("Who wants a chance to move up to the fun environment of development by being stuck with job of talking to the whiny babies for a while? OK, Jones raised his hand first."). The attitude is one of "This job sucks, it will always suck." More often than not, what the players end up with is disrespect, arrogance and dismissiveness. If someone were dismissing me and other players as "idiots," I'd be mad, too. Are you surprised they punish you publicly for this attitude?

These kinds of people have no clue on how to manage player expectations, which is the key to keeping a community from transforming from enthusiastic boosters into an angry, pitchfork-wielding mob. Worse, they have no respect for the players and it shows, no matter how polite their posts are. All these people see are the rudeness, and there is so much more there. Choosing your public face this way lacks professionalism; it's like NASA saying to a group of tourists, "OK, who wants a chance at being a Shuttle engineer by scrubbing our toilets for a year?"

Over a decade ago, while I was having a bout of major frustration with a group of such players in MUD II, a far more nit-picky, finicky and vocal community than any seen today, Bridgette Patrovsky turned around a situation that could have closed the game. She did it virtually overnight, which dumbfounded me. She then taught me the simple guidelines about how to handle a player community. Once she explained them, it was like a light bulb going off over my head. They have worked well for me ever since:

1. The players tee off because they are passionate about the game; harness the passion, don't wallow in the grief;

2. All they want is the same amount of respect you'd show any decent human being; give it and they will give you the shirt off their back. This doesn't happen automatically; you have to build up a karma bank over time. The bigger the karma bank, the more patient the players will be with you when a real problem happens;

3. When you respond in kind, you just get back more of it;

4. Every complaint is an opportunity to turn an angry person into a staunch supporter. It is easier than you think;

5. You are both a company employee and a player advocate. To make that work, you have to be honest and straightforward with both the players and the developers. Being deceptive, wishy-washy or out-right lying to either is unacceptable;

6. Be tough, but fair. Many players don't really want justice, they want to 'win,' but they will accept justice if you are consistent in applying it;

7. Be willing to admit publicly when you screw up, then make it right;

8. Do it all with a sense of humor and don't take it personally.

Read those eight guidelines, then compare them to how game communities are normally handled. From what I see, most violate at least 6 of the 8.

Is it any wonder player communities get out of hand? Who's the real 'idiot' here?

-Jess

[Met_K]

[snip]

Is it any wonder player communities get out of hand? Who's the real 'idiot' here?

-Jess

You.

[Jessica M.]

[snip]

Is it any wonder player communities get out of hand? Who's the real 'idiot' here?

-Jess

You.

LOL. That's what I get for asking an open-ended question.

[Met_K]

LOL. That's what I get for asking an open-ended question.

I just couldn't let something easy like that go by, now could I? Especially with the topic being what it is.

Besides, my bite shouldn't hurt that bad. My fangs aren't that sharp, haven't been to the dentist lately. They keep trying to file them down, telling me I'm really not a werewolf and should stop trying to use it as an excuse. Bastards, I tell you.

[Jessica M.]

LOL. That's what I get for asking an open-ended question.

I just couldn't let something easy like that go by, now could I? Especially with the topic being what it is.

The irony did not escape me, <g>.


Besides, my bite shouldn't hurt that bad. My fangs aren't that sharp, haven't been to the dentist lately. They keep trying to file them down, telling me I'm really not a werewolf and should stop trying to use it as an excuse. Bastards, I tell you.

Naw, just a little nip in the nether regions. I'm sure it will heal quickly. Unless infection sets in; after all, you haven't been to the dentist in a while...

[wumpus]

Get a room, you two.

Great post, Jessica. One caveat: I'm not sure many development houses have the resources to afford any kind of dedicated "community relations" employee.

[Sean Tudor]

This is just about the dumbest conclusion about how to handle a game community that I've ever seen posted on a public board. Is this what it means to be in community relations for a publisher these days, just up and quit when you get it wrong and don’t like the results?

SNIPPED

-Jess

You have raised some good points Jessica. Unfurtunately Adam's attitude (which may or may not be his own) is fairly prevalent in the games industry.

I'd say if Adam has this attitude then he needs to find a new job - he's probably been squatting in his current job for too long.

As someone who works in the IT industry the first rule of customer service is - the customer is always right - even when they are wrong. The situation is a lot more complicated than that obviously but the basic concept still applies.

Treat customers with respect and they will return the favour. If they don't then move on to the next customer.

[Mark Asher]

The other caveat is that for a lot of games there are issues that aren't gamestoppers but which are expensive to fix. For MMOGs, you need to try to fix the problems because you have players paying you on a monthly basis, but for single player games (especially ones that didn't sell well), at some point you lose money if you continue to work on the game.

Just look at game editors. Most are released as "unsupported". Yet many fans complain about them, want features added, etc. What's a game company supposed to do? It's a lose-lose situation. The game company loses money if the spend dev time on an editor after it's released, and they lose when they decline to spend time working on the editor.

About all the company can do is politely decline. Unfortunately, this often means they have to politely decline over and over and over again.

[Matthew Gallant]

Those are excellent guidelines, Jessica.

I'm a little puzzled by the "people who buy our games are idiots" attitude; it seems to be an improper and almost paradoxical resolution to the cognitive dissonance produced by...over-enthusiastic criticism. Gamers certainly have the luxury of not having to think through 100% whether or not what they want in a game is workable or feasible. They don't have the luxury of being familiar with all the inner workings of a game. They can only see the presentation layer, and they are more than qualified to comment on it.


Treat customers with respect and they will return the favour.

Actually, a fair portion won't. But, if you do make your community feel like they have a role, some members will step up and police that for you. Sort of like a city in Civilization: as long as you have as many happy citizens as you do unhappy, everything will be OK. That's my lame theory. Anyway, you can't make that happen if you ignore the good people in the process of ignoring the bad. If you don't care, they won't.

[Kool Moe Dee]

The other caveat is that for a lot of games there are issues that aren't gamestoppers but which are expensive to fix. For MMOGs, you need to try to fix the problems because you have players paying you on a monthly basis, but for single player games (especially ones that didn't sell well), at some point you lose money if you continue to work on the game.

Just look at game editors. Most are released as "unsupported". Yet many fans complain about them, want features added, etc. What's a game company supposed to do? It's a lose-lose situation. The game company loses money if the spend dev time on an editor after it's released, and they lose when they decline to spend time working on the editor.

About all the company can do is politely decline. Unfortunately, this often means they have to politely decline over and over and over again.

This is 100% correct. People generally don't understand that a lot of times, when "goodies" (new maps, levels, an SDK or editor, etc.) are released after a non-subscription game ships, it's because some developer is spending their own free time working on it. I've put in the extra time on this kind of stuff (SDKs and documentation), only to be on the receiving end of a fiery backlash of complaints about perceived faults with the package. It's very hard not to be pissed off when a gamer calls the product of your good will and (copious) overtime "worthless", to use the mildest of names. :evil: Harder still when they admit they pirated your game.

The worst part about it is when people accuse you of "abandoning the game." There's an unhealthy perception growing among gamers that a game is somehow incomplete, or that the developers are evil/greedy/ugly, if it is not continually upgraded or enhanced after it ships.

[Chris Nahr]

The worst part about it is when people accuse you of "abandoning the game." There's an unhealthy perception growing among gamers that a game is somehow incomplete, or that the developers are evil/greedy/ugly, if it is not continually upgraded or enhanced after it ships.

That's a different thing from complaining about free extras like an SDK, though. The industry itself got into the habit of shipping blatantly unfinished games that receive their first massive patch on the day of release. The customers certainly didn't ask for that! And it's the industry that has spun this habit into "we're enhancing our game" rather than "we fix it post-release, on the money of our customers" which is what they're actually doing. Is it any wonder that the customers have now adopted this attitude and expect these so-called "enhancements" indefinitely? Maybe if the industry got back into a habit of shipping complete games then the customers' expectations would change too...

[deanco]

"I won't even get into the legal issues involved in handling other people's ideas (which is why many game companies don't accept them at all)."

Ahh, too bad, this was the part I was interested in. Do you mean to say that if you implement a fan's idea, once the game's out he can turn around and sue you for using his idea?

Wooohhhh....

DeanCo--

[Brian Rucker]

"I won't even get into the legal issues involved in handling other people's ideas (which is why many game companies don't accept them at all)."

Ahh, too bad, this was the part I was interested in. Do you mean to say that if you implement a fan's idea, once the game's out he can turn around and sue you for using his idea?

Wooohhhh....

DeanCo--

That's obviously not true. If you see an idea you like, posted in your own forums, odds are the player wants to see it implimented in the first place not make money off it. I read fan forums too and most suggestions are more in the way of common sense or idealized, unrealistic, versions there of that a designer could easily say he saw somewhere else - and probably did. If there was a real concern the designers could put some boilerplate about ideas, regarding games created by the company, becoming property of the company into the forum signups. We see fan suggestions getting implimented all the time by some of the smarter designers and, often if not usually, it makes for better games. Knowing your game and its strengths, assuming it has some, should make designers less defensive when dealing with the public and better able to decide what ideas will improve their visions and which won't.

That's not to say Dylan shouldn't go electric. Sometimes even the sharpest players don't understand concepts as well as the creators do and some creators do better by shutting out the world and what it wants in favor of what he or she wants. At this point, for better or worse, the design of games isn't a one person job in the first place nor is it a very high concept art yet. Many of us do get it. Trust me we do.

Which isn't to say, in turn, that players can't be annoying, whiny, bastards. That's already been addressed brilliantly by Jessica's post. I've been a longtime MUSHer as well as forum goer and you can see the difference, palpably, in communities that are managed properly. We hear alot about trust and responsibility in the news these days and it applies to developers and their fans. There are many times forums go to hell, also, because developers or publishers don't address their public wisely or seem to ignore them - then fans can split up into factions and some can feel very compelled to act as a militia in defending a title they like while others are determined to make points they insist are valid and the more they are ignored the shriller both the detractor commandos, and the fanboy militias, become. Cool discussions become personal vendettas, and very silly personal vendettas at that.

Any reasonable fans who might have had some official info to draw from in solving those disputes, or a desire to mediate simply to keep the peace and subjects on topic, will have long since decided the developers don't care about what's being written anyhow and will be long gone. You need to keep those kinds of folks around and they'll do 80% of your public relations for you.

[Sparky]

Do you mean to say that if you implement a fan's idea, once the game's out he can turn around and sue you for using his idea?

Not an *idea* specifically (ie. "you should let the army tie up the monster's legs and knock him down like an AT-AT"). But people do get carried away and send character studies, entire game designs, all sorts of detailed stuff. You have to handle it carefully, in a way that protects your company and yet doesn't totally piss the sender off. Some developers do the safest thing and refuse to accept them. For example, Disney requires an NDA or work-for-hire agreement before you can even *suggest* things. Of course, we can't be so draconian - we're much too small and need every fan we can get, no matter how deranged :roll:

At another game company (pre-WWW), we would regularly get a pile of snail mail "ideas"...I was ordered to throw 'em away. Some were actually written on paper napkins. Nowadays, it's easier to contribute ideas, but I don't think much has changed in the way of handling them. The snail mail ideas were probably better thought out than the "ooo! hit send" type stuff anyway (although 90 percent of them were still useless).

[Anonymous]

"At another game company (pre-WWW), we would regularly get a pile of snail mail "ideas"...I was ordered to throw 'em away."

So that's what happened to my idea about travelling through time looking for a Japanese sword, accompanied by black sidekick, Shaft Afro.

[deanco]

Thanks for the reply, Sparky.

DeanCo--

[Kyle Wilson]

That's a different thing from complaining about free extras like an SDK, though. The industry itself got into the habit of shipping blatantly unfinished games that receive their first massive patch on the day of release. The customers certainly didn't ask for that!

Actually, they did. Of course, they didn't phrase it that way. It came out more like, "This game was supposed to be out last year! Are the developers on vacation or something?? Hurry up and ship the damn thing!" Of course, time and quality are dependent variables. You only get to pick one.

I think you are mostly right, though, and unready software is usually shipped for business reasons rather than to placate unruly gamers. The real problem is that scheduling software development is difficult. But marketing and business decisions need to be made months in advance, so publishers are left with a choice: ship an unfinished game now, or show a loss for the quarter and waste lots of prepaid advertising dollars months before the game finally comes out. To most businessmen, that's going to be a no-brainer.

The console market is different because the console manufacturers will *make* developers finish a game before shipping it. Publishers suffer, but consumers and console makers win.

[Xaroc]

Jessica, great post. Those 8 points should be posted near every single customer rep for every game ever made. Mythic violates those rules right and left. They don't communicate a lot and when they break something they have said "that is the way we intended it to work from the beginning" invalidating sometimes 500 hours of play time on what seems like a whim. They also outright lie at times which really pisses me off. They say they are going to do X but then never do it. So they have worn out their good will with me.

-- Xaroc

[Matthew Gallant]

Ah, but have they worn out your $12.95 a month?

[Xaroc]

Ah, but have they worn out your $12.95 a month?

Since my wife still plays not yet (I still may help her from time to time) but I haven't played in a while and I am agonizing over whether to Ebay my character or just let it die. It is hard to just let go of something you spent so much time with. However, it is a not a matter of if, it is a matter of when I will cancel/sell my account.

-- Xaroc

[Matthew Gallant]

haha :lol:

[Xaroc]

haha :lol:

What are you laughing at?

-- Xaroc